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In 3.5, halflings are short. They're very short. They are, as their name suggests, about half as tall as a person. This leads to some fairly startling visuals, as well as a bit of dissonance for anyone who works with or has children - an adult halfling is about as tall as a two-year-old human child - that's tiny. Even proportioned differently, they're still very small. 4e made them a bit taller - they average four feet tall instead of three. They're still tiny, but they're something easier to envision in combat, but they're less than a foot shorter than a short human woman, making them less distinct. Meanwhile, Tolkien's Hobbits stand between two and four feet tall, with average height of 3'6. (According to Wikipedia; I have no idea whether that's correct or consistant.) The next playtest packet makes them three feet tall.

Here are some visuals: imgur.com/xCKOv

The top row is 4e halflings; the second row is the height of (though not proportioned as) Tolkein Hobbits; the third row is 3.5/Next halflings. (2e Halflings average 3'5 and 3'3, respectively, and thus look only a hair smaller than Tolkein halflings, close enough that I didn't bother to make a separate row for them.)

I have to admit that the taller halflings come closest to what I imagine when I think of halflings, even pre-4e - clearly smaller, but still something that looks like it can manage in the same world, and with enough heft that you can imagine it fighting alongside other adventurers. The smallest halflings just look a little too small to me -- but they're the size halflings are listed as (on average) in Next currently. (Assuming that males are an inch taller than the racial average and females are an inch shorter.) I love the 3.5 iconic character Lidda (the halfling rogue), but she ends up looking implausibly small when depicted alongside the other characters.

What do people think? Which halflings feel right to you?

I personally enjoyed my halflings to be tiny little fighters, but thats because I like to think of their AC coming from being a pain in the backside to hit.

I wont lose any sleep if they are larger though. 

I think we have to start with a couple of questions.

#1 Are Halflings relatively proportional to Humans?

I would say yes (it makes the math a lot easier too)


#2 What is a good weight for Halfling relative to human?

This is an important one because it will be the basis for calculating height. I think they have to be light enough for a Normal size character to carry them over the shoulder easily enough, but they also need to have enough muscle to use regular weapons and hold their own in combat. I would say somewhere between one-third and one-quarter human weight. This works well with old method of increasing size category increase weight by 4 times.

So I am going to with the middle ground. [Halfling Weight] = [Human Weight]/3.5

Since weight is proportional to the cube of your height we have,

([Human Height]^3) / ([Halfling Height]^3) = 3.5

Solve for Halfling Height gives,

[Halfling Height] = [Human Height] / [3.5^(1/3)] = 66% [Human Height]


So if Average Human Height is 5'10" then the,
Average Halfling Height is...

3'10"

This seems about right to me. Tall enough to weild a weapon, but still small enough for the Dwarf to call him "The Little Guy". Also this fits with size categories well since, Dwarf should be closer to human height than they are to halfling height since human and dwarf are both medium, while halfling is small.

This is one piece of flavor that I just do not care about, and I'm not really sure what the big deal is either way, no pun intended, just because there's so little difference between the options. Probably more importantly, there's no point for me between 4'1" and 2'11" where the Halfling becomes any less silly, so why does it matter? Honestly, this doesn't seem like something worth worrying about either way. If you want your Halfling character to be a slightly different height than what the default fluff suggests, then just make it so. As far as I'm concerned, the fluff might as well just say that average adult Halfling height is between 2'10" and 4'2", and that would work perfectly fine for me.

So what do you think of the Gnome then, who traditionally is even smaller?